News and Updates from EFM Missionaries
My wife, Kathy, and I, along with Rex and Hannah McDowell, had the pleasure of taking part in a missionary convention in St. Louis, MI, located at “the middle of the mitten.” Unfortunately, a predicted blizzard, which never fully developed, cut our convention short.
However, on Saturday evening about seventy people turned out for a pitch-in dinner and PowerPoint slide presentations. The theme of the convention was “Planting Seeds for Harvest,” and the hall where we ate was decorated to depict that idea. A paint-stirring paddle was fastened to each end of the tables where we ate. The sticks held a string that ran from one end of each table to the other, as if to support beans or peas. Down the center of each table someone had placed seed packets and loose seeds. One stick on each table held the name of one of the countries where EFM labors, as if to remind us what was growing in that row of the garden. Betty Derschied, missionary president, even handed out gummy worms to many of those who were present!
Of the four planned Sunday services, three were cancelled because of the bad weather. Even at that, about sixty people gathered in the St. Louis Wesleyan Holiness Church to hear a missionary challenge and to both see and hear a story told and dramatized by Hannah McDowell. Despite the cold weather, we were trying to fan the flames of missionary interest and plant the seeds of missionary service in the hearts and minds of all those present.
–Steven E. Hight